Joomla Launch Successful !

After 18 months of planning and hard work, our new library web site launched at 5am on Monday, September 12. It went very smoothly, thanks to our great tech team. Actually, it was a bit of a letdown, to be perfectly honest! Not a single patron said a word to us or contacted us with their comments, even though my message on the home page asked for user reaction. After two full days of being up, I’m still waiting for feedback. When I think about this logically, this suggests that our new page might be so user-friendly that folks don’t have any problems finding what they want. Our catalog search is so obvious that you can’t possibly miss it and library events are front and center on the page. On the other hand, we’ve added lots of new features, totally new design with a different color scheme, and personal input from almost a dozen staff members. Doesn’t this at least rate an email or two?

Looking back, this was a great learning experience. I continue to ask myself whether we should have chosen Drupal rather than Joomla, but at the time, I was told that Joomla had a shorter learning curve and I wanted it to be easy for the staff to use. So far, this has proved to be true. Librarian participation is high, at least for the time being. The true proof will be down the road when the novelty has worn off and the routine kicks in.